Tag: Internet

(Presenting the Prime Ministerrrrrr, no Najib is the PM, oh well, presenting the First Lady of Malaysiaaaa, errr no as well, the Queen is the First Lady of Malaysia…oh never mind. The fact is this is a very very touching moment indeed but it is an overkill to overdo it. Image source: The Star)

Hmmm, you noticed something?

Wait, before that, go ahead and read this:-

Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor hopes that people will stop speculating over the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370 out of respect for the families of the passengers and crew of the ill-fated flight.

“Do not speculate as long as there is no verified information. I hope the whole world will give thought to the feelings of the families of the 239 people who were on board the aircraft,” said Rosmah, who is wife of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

She said anyone with credible information on the tragedy should come forward to assist efforts to trace the plane which has been missing since March 8. “Don’t throw stones and then hide your hands behind your back (make wild allegations). That’s cowardice, don’t just talk and not provide solutions,” she said during an interview on Bernama TV’s “Ruang Bicara” programme.

We Malaysian probably by now should be immune to these kind of “syiok sendiri” stunt in the national media. To be fair, the Big Momma may have best intentions in her mind for making the statement but imagine if a foreigner read the above statement.

Firstly, there has not been any light at the end of the tunnel on this tragedy and yet here, we are having a politician’s wife to come up on air and telling for anyone with credible information on the tragedy should come forward to assist efforts to trace the missing plane. Pardon my French but doesn’t that sounds simply, idiotic?

Don’t you think that with more than a month lapsed and the search for the missing plane turning out to be one of the largest in history with more than eight countries deploying their money, hundreds of men, numerous satellites, aircrafts, surface ships and submarines covering thousands of the kilometers of deep ocean, wouldn’t anyone with credible information WOULD HAVE COME FORWARD AND OPENED THEIR BLOODY MOUTH BY NOW?

Oh never mind, I know what you are thinking.

Secondly, it gets worse with this:-

Rosmah also shared with the audience about the telephone conversations Najib had with foreign leaders regarding the matter. “Even before he could finish what he wanted to say, many of the leaders straight away informed him of their willingness to help and asked what they could do,” she said.

Gosh, what this means? That she often eavesdrops on the PM’s official phone calls? Or the PM keeps his wife updated on all of his official phones calls with other leaders even though she is not part of his cabinet or his official advisers? Either way, doesn’t this falls in the same category of leaking of Government secrecy as well? Doesn’t that compromises the decision that the PM may make after these phone calls? Perhaps when the next time the US President calls Najib on something sensitive and confidential, he should ask if Najib’s wife is eavesdropping on the conversation.

Then again, who we are kidding here, right? Perhaps for the hardcore BN supporters, this may mean nothing to them – after all, they hardly made noise when the lady flew on Government jet (paid for by taxpayers) for private functions (some jokers were even tried to justify the obvious abuse of taxpayers money), what more of someone eavesdropping on the PM’s official phone calls.

Anyway, let’s leave the circus show back home for a second and let’s come back to the question I asked at the start – “you noticed something?”

You noticed with every one glimpse of evidence or lead that “emerged” to give the world some kind of hope, in the end, it turns out to be nothing and we are back to square one? It was almost like someone throw a bit of bone here and the everyone runs over looking for the meat and nothing is found and then another bit of bone is found else where and the cycle starts all over again. At the end of the day, the real meat is yet to be found.

(Is there more than meet the eyes? Are we getting the truth or lies laced as the truth? Are we been looking at the wrong place? More importantly is the Government telling us the truth? The banner seems to say a different story. Image: Google)

Well, think about it.

At first it was reported that the plane had lost over South China Sea and then someone over at RMAF decided to wake up (this matter seemed to have been quietly closed) and then said that the plane had turned back. So that ends the massive search over the South China Sea – privately pissing off many countries involved in the search. Then there was some days looking for the needle in the haystack over the Indian Ocean before satellite images of “debris” emerged (there was similar claims of debris in the South China Sea as well). And when the surface ships headed to the sites where the debris was thought to be, nothing was found.

Then there were signs of “strong” pings but that too seems to be disappearing into the thin air:-

The latest acoustic signal detected in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was unlikely to be from the missing plane and there had been no major breakthrough in the more than month-long hunt, Australian officials said on Friday. Analysis of the signal, captured by a listening device buoy and relayed to an Australian ship on Thursday, was unlikely to be related to the aircraft’s black boxes, Angus Houston, head of the Australian search, said in a statement.

And in reality, with all the NSA satellites up there, satellites so sensitive that they can detect the beeper circuit in a digital watch from outer space, the real time is ZERO. And if this entire charade was real, that is exactly what would have happened. But since it’s all a dog and pony show of fraud, two weeks was the number given because then they could look for a little while and say OH, we will never find it now, the batteries are dead.

The missing Malaysia Airlines jet was “thrown around like a jet fighter” in a bid to dodge radar after it lost contact with authorities, Malaysian military investigators believe. Flight MH370 is thought to have climbed to 45,000ft – 10,000ft above its normal altitude – before dropping to 5000ft and continuing to fly low at high speed, a source close to the investigation told Britain’s Sunday Times.

The drastic manoeuvres required to perform such a sudden drop in altitude suggest the Boeing 777 was deliberately trying to avoid radar signals and vanish, the source said. The new lead adds weight to the theory Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own plane after tricking his co-pilot into leaving the cockpit and then locking the door.

Another speculation? Another wild allegation? The Big Momma must be having sleepless nights reading these “allegations” on the internet.

Somehow this fuels the notion that the plane has been hijacked and it did not crash:-

Flying in the shadow of a similar aircraft is easier than critics make it out to be, he said in a blog entry. Answering objections such as wake turbulence, visual separation, and altimeter interference, he said he’s heard from dozens of seasoned Boeing 777 pilots who agree with him.

This theory faces one glaring problem: where do you land a 348-ton aircraft that requires an 5,000-foot runway in one of the more remote regions of the world?

But other scenarios seem even more unlikely. If a mechanical breakdown had been responsible for the early change in course, the flight would be safe by now or would have crashed in the Gulf of Thailand. (Or would have flown on for many hundreds of miles after a fire killed the crew but somehow left the autopilot and major avionics systems intact, in a Wired.com ‘zombie flight’ speculation.)

Taking this aircraft, whoever did it, would require inside knowledge, a professional’s skill at piloting a Boeing 777 — and a complex motive. Anyone like this, the reasoning goes, would have a destination in mind. Intending suicide or ransom, he could have gone to Beijing as scheduled or returned to Kuala Lumpur without attracting notice, or even gone to any of the cities of Southeast Asia or Australia. He could have simply crashed into the sea. But instead, he did something that required him to fly to the west.

(A short break from a post on MH370 – we are still hopeful of finding the wreck and getting to the bottom of the reason why the plane went missing. Looking at the various flip-flop statements coming out from the politicians, there is little doubt why countries like China is whacking Malaysia left right and center and now we have the criminals from the South of Philippines kidnapping tourists from Sabah under the very nose of ESSCOM. Another case of someone sleeping on the job?)

It happened once when I still had my trusted N8 and not surprisingly it has happened again

Well, it started with this:-

Swedish developer Knowit Mobile already has a number of Xperia Themes in the Google Play Store. It has now released seven more, which includes three freebies. You won’t find these themes through Sony Select right now, so you’ll have to go direct to the Google Play Store. You will find links to the Play Store and pictures of each of the new themes below.

You know me, I soon get bored with the existing themes and seeing one that seemed to be custom made for Xperia (and seemed to be endorsed by Sony and it is in Google Play), this new set of themes looked very tempting.

(I love the icons at the bottom – it was a very cool theme but unfortunately with a hidden time bomb. Image source: Google Play)

However I then made 2 mistakes.

Mistake No. 1 – Changing the standard Xperia themes to something else when the standard themes are already working well and perfectly. Why fix something when it is not broken, eh?

Mistake No. 2 – Not reading further into the post above and read the readers comments. Otherwise I would have discovered that there is something wrong with this theme.

I had installed some of the themes and it was working well until one fine morning, I noticed there was still one theme I have not installed – Winter Snow. It looked great too. It looked alright when I installed the theme and nothing looked out of the ordinary as I navigated the various functions on my phone with the new theme installed. I have installed plenty of apps before but nothing wrong have happened.

Anyway after the new theme installed, I just placed my phone on the side and continued with my work. A couple of minutes later, I noticed something from the corner of my eyes – the phone was restarting. I don’t know why it restarted. It usually happens when there is a major upgrade but there was none for the day. I waited for it to restart but something was not right – it restarts and then half way, it stops and restarts again. This goes on and on. I know then I was in trouble. And I know that the new theme must be screwing things up and thus I had to uninstall it.

For a moment, I panicked and was cursing myself. I quickly checked on the internet on how to stop this insane restart and how to do a hard reset or start on a safe mode. No matter how many times I press on the power on and the volume down (with different sequences), nothing changed. After a couple of attempts unsuccessfully, I gave up. The only choice left was to bring it to the Sony authorized service center. I checked on Sony’s website – the nearest one was either at KLCC or Mid Valley. Then I noticed there was another service center near Sunway (their out-sourced authorized service center). I decided to try my luck there as it was nearer – I urgently needed my phone to make calls and at the moment, I only had a faulty phone that was booting in a loop and could not be shut off (it was getting warmer too).

I rushed to the nearest service center and noticed that there was only 1 customer at the waiting area. I saw one lady at the counter and so I walked over and showed my phone to the lady at the counter. She was lazily looked at my phone and then looked at me. What she said next made me speechless for a moment – they don’t handle smartphones. Apparently they handle all other items made by Sony but not smartphones (but that was not what I saw on the Sony’s website). I thought she was pulling a fast one on me. I insisted that she call a technician and take a look nonetheless. She reverted that even they assist me on this, it will take 1 – 2 months for the phone to be fixed.

She asked me to go to KLCC instead and she gave me a number to call. That was not acceptable and I persisted for someone OTHER than her (one look at her told me that she is not a tech savvy) to give my faulty phone a look but nothing moved. Ya, you can call it Mistake No. 3. It had all the element of “tidak apa” written on the wall. So I decided that there was no point talking to this lady at the counter and try my luck with the service center at KLCC over the weekends. That means a couple of days without my smartphone but it looks like I had no other choice.

I was angry for wasting my time with the so-called service center and feeling very frustrated, I went back to the internet, hoping that someone out there, some where in the world would have faced the same problem and managed to find a workable solution. Another trip to the Sony Mobile website for trouble shooting and tips however did not do anything to resolve the problem. I was back to square one and the phone was getting even warmer by now. I was beginning to get worry and Yoda’s statement on the dark side of the force echoed in my mind – “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering”? I was suffering indeed.

I tried a different key words in the Google Search and then something positive showed up:-

Hi, speak from Brazil.

I’m here to warn you guys that the themes of Sony, those new (cute) themes simple put our Xperia SP to bootloop, don’t use them in any circumstances.

I’ve made a lot of test in the firmware 12.1.0.266 and when i put any of those damn themes and turn off my phone, it just enter in bootloop mode when i try to turn it on again.

Then i have to use SUS to recovery phone.

I’ll repeat

DO NOT USE THE NEW THEMES IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
UNFORTUNATELY SONY MESSED UP OUT PHONE.

The only way available now was using the SUS program (Sony Update Service) but that would erase all data & installed programs at the same time. Between the phone kept booting up unsuccessfully and causing me to miss my calls and SMSes & leaving with no other choice but to take time to go to the Sony service center at KLCC and me losing the data in the phone, I decided to go for the latter.

I downloaded and then powered up SUS and there was some moments before SUS were able to detect the phone (I misread the steps provided by SUS and cause the phone not detected). Then it took about 5 minutes for SUS to download Android 4.3 for Xperia SP and installed it. My phone then recovered and able to boot normally. It was missing all my phone contacts, apps and SMS logs – 2 of it (contacts & SMS logs) were easily restored using my earlier backup using Sony PC Companion. The apps on the hand will take some time to be updated to the level before I hit the problem in the morning. But at the end of the day, the phone was back to normal and I need not go to KLCC.

The internet is indeed a great place to look for information and tips and saves a whole load of trouble with the service centers. The solution on the internet solves my boot loop problem in less than 10 minutes – a far cry from the 1 – 2 months that the lady mentioned to me.

(Photo note: An image taken by the Mars rover Opportunity, shown by NASA during a press conference Thursday, Oct 7, 2004, shows a bizarre, lumpy rock informally named Wopmay on the lower slopes of Endurance Crater. Scientists believe the lumps in Wopmay were formed by one of two processes. Either they were caused by the impact that created the football field-sized crater, or they arose when water soaking the rock dried up, said the scientists)

(Photo note: The Mars Descent Imager (MARDI), a camera on board the Curiosity designed to take photos during the descent to Mars, took this image of the heat shield plummeting to the Martian surface)

(Photo note: A close-up of one of the rover’s wheels. Curiosity is currently driving around the Gale Crater, a place NASA scientists believe could harbor signs of microbial life, from the past or present)

(All text and images sources and for more images, click here and here. Copyright NASA)

NASA successfully landed the latest of its Mars Rover called Curiosity in Mars last week. With this, they have 3 rovers (Spirit and Opportunity which landed back in 2004) on the planet exploring the surface and geology. The mission’s scientific objective was to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars.

The much-celebrated Mars rover Curiosity is headed for Mount Sharp, where it will help scientists explore the question of life on Mars as it climbs up and up. Meanwhile, however, NASA’s budget for planetary exploration is slated to go down, down, down.

Scientists are basking in the success of Curiosity’s stunning landing earlier this week, proving that a complicated system involving a parachute and a sky crane can safely deliver a 2,000-pound vehicle to Mars. The $2.6 billion Curiosity will spend years roaming the planet, snapping photos and gathering scientific data.

Given the budget constraints facing the space agency, however, there are limits on what the rover, and NASA, will be able to do on the surface of the Red Planet. Although astronauts brought back thousands of moon rocks during the Apollo Mission, there’s never been a sample of Martian material returned to Earth. Such a mission is considered a priority, so scientists can do more detailed chemical analyses.

After the Moon, we have been eyeing Mars as the next frontier and a place where humans may be able to adapt as their next home. Who knows what lays thereafter – new mining colonies perhaps or as a “jumping stone” to explore other planets? And inspire future generation of space explorers and scientists to think beyond and ahead. And with 2 rovers on the planet, why we need another rover on the planet?

NASA’s new robot rover named Curiosity landed safely early Monday in a huge crater near the equator of Mars and will soon begin its scientific studies. This marks NASA’s seventh landing on the red planet and is its 19th Mars mission, including those by orbiters and other spacecraft.

Why Mars Again?

The big unknown remains. Scientists want to know if any form of life ever existed there, and that means microscopic organisms. Curiosity is the most ambitious effort ever to burrow into that question, though it is not equipped to look for actual microbes. During its two-year exploration, it will try to answer whether the giant crater had the right conditions to support that type of life.

What will Curiosity do?

Curiosity carries a toolbox of 10 instruments, including a rock-zapping laser and a mobile organic chemistry lab. It also has a long robotic arm that can jackhammer into rocks and soil. It will hunt for the basic ingredients of life, including carbon-based compounds, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and oxygen, as well as minerals that might provide clues about possible energy sources.

And talking about the mission to Mars, if you recalled in 2010, President Obama talked about a manned mission to Mars by year 2030 whilst at the same time, cancelled the project to return to the Moon citing that the project was too costly, “behind schedule, and lacking in innovation”. With the latest successful landing of the Curiosity Rover, it will be interest how this mission to take man to the Red Planet going to take place in the next few years. It is also going to be very interesting how we are going to push the current innovation to make space exploration cheaper, safer and longer lasting.

(Our very own Planetarium Space Theater – it is a good platform to generate keen deep interest on space exploration and science. The other is the Langkawi National Observatory which has good stellar and solar telescopes. Image source: National Planetarium)

Looking back at Malaysia, no doubt we started with the wrong foot with teaching of Science and Mathematics in Bahasa Malaysia instead of the more “universal” language of English (we still have a chance to correct this mistake) but it is good that we have also started to expose Malaysians (especially the young ones) on the science of astronomy, mechanical, robotics, computing and others that is crucial for future space explorations. The sight on a greater exploration of the space should be there for all and we should start with the right language of science and mathematics.

P.s. Have a nice weekend and happy holidays to all. Hope that you will miss the madness at the highway and arrive safely at your destination.

Update 2:theStar reports – The Cabinet is carefully studying Section 114A of the Evidence Act 1950 in line with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s directive, after it became a much discussed matter in cyberspace. Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said Wednesday the Government held a firm stand on the matter but so far, there were no plans to make new amendments to the Act.

If I were you, I would not lose my breath over this “Cabinet carefully studying…after Najib’s directive”. Now they have the edge (after all, the Act have been passed by the Parliament), you think they going to let go just like that?

Update 1: I do not know who this Fatimah Zuhri is (a BN cyber trooper?) but running through her “arguments” in support for Section 114A, it is clear she is missing a point in her support for Section 114A (no doubt the amendments have its merits as highlighted by her). The point that she missed is on the burden of proof shifting to the accused. She says that yes, the accused is now guilty until proven innocent but then goes on to say that if one is innocent, then it is easy to prove it so.

This argument is seriously flawed as 1. under our legal system, one always presumed to be innocent until proven guilty, so why the sudden shift then? Will the resources be made available by the authorities for the accused to prove the innocence? and 2. she is talking about proving your innocence using IP & MAC address – is she a computer expert on cyber crime or she is just a casual PC user who knows nothing more than using some easy Microsoft programs and surf the net.

Look at the comments by one Ah Beng under her post and you will realised that proving your innocence using IPs & MAC Addresses may be futile if the real perpetrators are experts in covering their tracks (there are plenty of tools on the net just for that) and since you are presumed guilty until proven innocent, you are screwed. There seems to be a clear loophole on the horizon (since it does not stop anyone who is not happy with what has been written online from hiring certain experts to hack and create trouble for the writers under Section 114A) and that should not be the case.

They have been trying to censor the internet for ages now but so far their attempts have whacked them back on their face. This seems to be the latest of their attempt to censor what is said & discussed on the net but this time around, it is coming through the “back door” via the Evidence Act 1950

Titled “Presumption of Fact in Publication”, Section 114A holds the following people accountable for publishing content online:

(1) those who own, administrate, or edit websites open to public contributors, such as online forums or blogs;

(2) those who provide webhosting services or Internet access; and

(3) those own the computer or mobile device used to publish content online.

In other words, if allegedly defamatory content is traced back to your username, electronic device, and/or WiFi network, Section 114A presumes you are guilty of publishing illicit content on the Internet.

But what if you were the victim of identity theft and a hacker wrongfully used your Twitter or Facebook account to post defamatory content?

Under Section 114A, you are still considered guilty until proven innocent.

What is wrong with Section 114A?

Section 114A is problematic for a number of reasons:

i) It disproportionately burdens average Internet users who are wrongfully accused of publishing seditious or defamatory content.

ii) It makes Internet intermediaries–parties that provide online community forums, blogging and hosting services–liable for content that is published through their services.

iii) It allows hackers and cyber criminals to be free by making the person whose account/computer is hacked liable for any content/data which might have changed.

iv) It is a bad law passed in haste and does not take into account public interest and participation.

(We may not own an iPhone, iPod, iPad, iMac or download from iTunes but in one way or another, the way we use technology and some of our personal gadgets these days have greatly influenced by Steve Jobs ideas, innovation and footprint for better user friendly and usability designs. Image source: Wikipedia)

Click these posts from Fast Company for interesting insights on Steve Jobs:-

(I love the smell of napalm…err…software updates in the morning. Image source: http://noknok.tv)

I thought it was the long overdue PR1.2 update but the device updates screen shows the release type as “Symbian Anna” (now I believe that PR1.2 was never released in Malaysia). It took less than 30 minutes for the latest updates for my N8 from Nokia servers – it was clean and smooth.

However, the latest updates is not really noticeable until it is time for you to type on a number or message – the QWERTY feature in portrait mode is really helpful (although sometimes the keypad seems too small but there is an option to switch off QWERTY function off) and when I start typing to call, the address book comes in other top side of the screen for an easy pick (it was not that easy under PR1.1). The Communicator function now is on display on home page but I have not played with the settings yet. The camera’s auto focus seems working better now.

Nokia has chosen to use Windows Phone as its primary OS for its future smartphones so I do hope that we were still get updates for the Symbian^3 OS in terms of new functions, performance and security.

(Ya, it is just a joke but the reality of things is conman can come in many forms and can strike when you least expected. Image source: http://punditkitchen.wordpress.com)

Seriously, reading the daily newspaper can be a frightening thing early in the morning these days!

Just read some of these stories:-

A woman who fell for a con artist’s sob stories on Facebook ended up being cheated of RM1.1mil (source)

And

A syndicate has cheated several companies of millions by placing orders using post-dated cheques and then disappearing with the goods. The cheques, meanwhile, are not honoured (source)

And

A woman is claiming that she was cheated of RM13,000 by a policeman who promised to secure bail for the release of her two sons, detained for alleged involvement in motorcycle theft. (source)

In the past, in addition to the abuse of tax-payers money by the locals, such con jobs are usually confined to emails from daughters or widows of a purported dictator or some politicians who had died leaving millions in the bank and with “sincere” request for a small fee to get the money out. Reward for this small help can be indeed very rewarding – millions dollars to be shared. Read:-

Perhaps some stories can be too convincing indeed but on the other hand, the question also arises on whether we have been closing one eye to the influx of conmen and criminals into this country?

In the case of the woman who lost RM1.1 million to the conmen, the police acted fast and managed to arrest 2 Nigerians, 2 Bangladeshis and undisclosed number of locals. There was no surprise to note that there were Nigerians involved in this scheme. The Africans masquerading as students has been let loose in this country for a very long time now and you sometimes wonder how these students from poor impoverished countries who at times can’t even speak proper English can be driving luxury cars couple of months after they had arrived here.

The number of the Africans near my housing areas has been steady growing – perhaps they are indeed students but at times, they do show their ugly side of their character.

Malaysia has begun taking fingerprints from foreigners entering the country in a bid to prevent illegal immigrants coming in using fake papers, an official said today.

After the famed 9-11 tragedy, many governments around the world talked about implementing biometrics validation as another mean to nab known terrorists before they could do something sinister. Malaysia on the other hand probably felt that it is not necessary to the same considering we are in the safe part of the world. But all the while, we have been having problem with illegal immigrants. But why we did not start fingerprinting back then? Whilst we tried other means of enforcement like securing our borders, we never added fingerprinting as part of the arsenal against foreign criminals and terrorists.

However, it is better now than too late even though fingerprinting is only going to run on trial basis. NST quoted the Immigration Department Director General saying that 3% of the 24.4 million foreigners who visited the country in 2010 had been involved in various crimes. I wonder how many of them, the so-called students from the sub continent of Africa.

This measure will not however stop foreigners from committing crimes – we need to buck up on all other measures as well like better policing, better surveillances and investigations, better education and strict banking policies but perhaps we should be more diligent as well. It may sound unfortunate but when it come to dealing with foreigners and money, we may put on the distrust hat and triple check the “way too convincing” stories which if not checked, could make us lose millions. It is ok to be paranoia because this is how the world has come to be.